CHAPTER 196: HEAL OR PERISH

The decision was made without toasts or blessings.

A few minutes later, Dylan was descending into the city’s bowels, wrapped in his moth-eaten blanket like a fallen king off to wage a crusade. Behind him, Julius led the way with the confidence of a drunken mountain guide, while the three other soldiers brought up the rear, weapons shaky but eyes resolved.

Their entry point? A manhole cover behind an abandoned butcher shop, still reeking of rancid grease and half-washed memories. Julius lifted the grate with disturbing ease, like he’d done it all his life—or had simply stopped pretending he was headed anywhere but down.

"If anyone thinks it stinks, congratulations, you’re still alive. Enjoy it," he said before vanishing into the black maw.

Dylan followed. The iron ladder was freezing, each rung biting into his bare feet, every motion reminding him that his body wasn’t built for this. Not yet. But he went down anyway. Because the dead don’t walk, and he still had things to do.

The first thing that greeted him was the clammy, forgetful air. The tunnel stretched before them like the gullet of a beast that never stopped chewing its prey. Hanging wires brushed their hair, cobwebs crackled under their fingers. The floor was slick... and the walls oozed an ancient sweat, and the sounds... weren’t all theirs.

Somewhere above, the city was still alive. But here, it was rotting.

Each step dragged them deeper into oblivion. Their shadows danced along the walls like lost creatures, and the flickering, pale light of their portable torches made everything look like a stuttering nightmare. Dylan clutched his blanket tighter around him—not against the cold, but against that inner gaze, the one that opens too wide when the outside world falls silent.

Julius stopped abruptly and raised a hand. Everyone halted.

"Listen," he whispered.

At first, there was nothing. Then... a splashing sound echoed from afar. Slow. Rhythmic. Far too measured to be natural.

"Something’s coming down," murmured the youngest soldier.

"Or it’s ahead of us," Julius corrected without turning.

Dylan’s jaw tensed. No shoes. No weapon. Not even a good reason to stay alive, except for that stubborn, twisted grudge knotted in his soul.

They quickened their pace.

Julius led, sidestepping collapsed corridors, stepping over twisted beams and forgotten skeletons. The tunnels branched like clogged veins, but he seemed to know—sense—guess. He only slowed to make sure the others were still behind. Dylan advanced in silence, step by step, like a man refusing to collapse just to prove he still could.

Then, after what felt like an eternity underground, Julius pointed to a dead end.

A real blind wall.

"You want us to headbutt it until it opens?" grumbled one of the soldiers.

Unfazed, Julius ran his hand along a black brick. "Fourth row, third stone from the top." He pressed.

A creaking sound, dry and grating like a hobo’s laugh. The wall pivoted slowly, revealing a narrow passage plunged in absolute darkness.

"The secondary entrance to the Observatory’s cellars. Sealed forty-three years ago."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Captain of the guard. I was."

One by one, they slipped in. The floor here was dry. Too dry. Dust rose in slow, lazy swirls, like it remembered being alive. The air had no scent—just a silence thickened by centuries.

"From here on, no sound. No flame. No shouting," Julius murmured. "What dwells down here doesn’t like being reminded it was found."

"What exactly is hiding here?" asked Dylan, voice hushed but firm.

"Plenty of creatures like to nest beneath human foundations." Julius turned to him. "Plenty were hunted by the empire—but some still linger. The quiet ones."

Dylan nodded. His eyes said something else. Like he didn’t care much for the warning.

"Fine."

"Well, believe it or not... there’s one here. She doesn’t show herself. But the air still remembers her."

Dylan took a deep breath and followed Julius through a splintered door. The other side looked like an inverted amphitheater, carved into black rock. Signs were everywhere: claw marks on the walls, dried blood crusted into the grooves of the floor, and at the center—a carcass. Or rather... what was left of it.

Not just one beast, but many. Fused? Dissolved? Hard to tell.

Dylan stepped closer, crouched, hands trembling. He laid his fingers on a shard of bone faintly glowing with a greenish hue.

"Bingo," he murmured. "An anima gem."

He closed his eyes. Focused. The gem dislodged with a soft, sucking wind. Weak, yes. But real. He pressed it to his palm. A shiver ran up his spine. His stigmate pulsed gently, like a sleeping beast still breathing.

"You look like someone who just swallowed his prayer," called Julius from the shadows.

"Maybe," Dylan replied. "Maybe I just found a good reason not to die."

The others stepped back, forming a silent guard around the half-naked scavenger Dylan had become. He had neither the dignity of a hero nor the majesty of a sorcerer. But he had a methodical way of sifting through remains, plunging fingers into hardened flesh, scraping marrow for essence gems. Not out of thrill. Out of need.

He found a second one. Duller, smaller, but whole. Then a third, cracked in two, which he tucked into a fold of his blanket anyway.

Julius watched, arms crossed, head slightly tilted.

"You really gonna suck them all down like a starving beggar?"

Dylan didn’t answer. He could feel the gems in his palm like foreign heartbeats. Each burst of essence lit up his skin with prickling heat, a slow, clumsy awakening of his muscles. He was shivering less. His hands barely trembled now.

"Certain circumstances gave me a more developed spiritual core than most," he said. "Coupled with this greedy stigmate... yeah, I kind of have to."

Julius gave a half-shrug, the kind that says do what you must, but don’t expect applause.

Behind them, the other three stayed close, throwing wary glances at the walls, at the ceiling, at the silence itself — as if the air could snap shut at any second and bite off their head.